Recipe: Grilled Western Pork Ribs

Are you planning on cooking dad something for Father’s Day tomorrow? Would you like to, but have no idea what to cook? Or would you like to grill something for him and haven’t decided on what or how yet? Here’s a simple grilling technique I threw together yesterday that works well.

You’ll want to start this cooking process a full four hours before you plan to eat. Dinner’s at 6? Plan to start the actual cooking process (i.e., firing up the grill) at 2. Before this, make sure you have some dark brown sugar, Kosher salt, ground pepper, one or two bottles of your (or dad’s!) favorite BBQ sauce, a BBQ brush, a pair of metal tongs, a baking sheet, one or two of the larger disposable foil pans, and a wire cleaning brush for the grill grates.

Right now, Kroger has these great western-style boneless pork ribs in some of their meat cases. If you can’t find the boneless ones (these were the last three packages of boneless western-style ribs at the Point Place, Ohio, location on Wednesday, but they probably have more now), just about any kind of ribs will do. Make sure they have a decent amount of marbling on them without going overboard. Large hunks of fat won’t make for as much of an appetizing meal, and with this technique you’re not using the rendered fat to cook the meat anyway.

If using gas, start the grill and set it for almost as high as the flame can be set. This could be labeled as the medium point of the “High” setting or, as it is on my Char-Broil grill, it’s actually labeled as “Sear”. If you’re using charcoal, start the coals as usual as a pile in the middle of the grill. Close the grill lid and let it pre-heat while you get the meat ready for cooking.

Back in the kitchen, dump about a half a bag of dark brown sugar into a mixing bowl, add a palm full of Kosher salt, and one or two tablespoons or so of ground pepper. Mix this up (yes, you can use your hand for this), and once it’s mixed, rub some of it all over each of the pieces of rib meat. Stack the rubbed meat on a baking sheet.

If you’re using a gas grill, somewhere along the back will be the hottest part of the grilling surface. If you’re using charcoal, the hottest area will be in the middle where the coals are piled up. Using the metal tongs, place anywhere from 4 to 6 of the ribs over this hottest area, and smile when they immediately start sizzling. (If they don’t, the grill’s not hot enough, so turn up the heat just a bit.) After just two or three minutes, use the tongs again to turn the ribs to an unseared side. Do this until each side has nice grill marks and is a good brown color, then place the seared ribs in a foil pan that’s not on the cooking surface of the grill. Keep them in one layer in the foil pan, with enough space in-between to fit the BBQ brush. (This is why you may need to use more than one of the foil pans.)

Once all the pieces of rib meat are seared and in the foil pans, either turn the gas grill down to its lowest-possible setting, or spread the coals out in the charcoal grill so they’ll start cooling. Scrub the grill surface with the wire brush to clean all the gunk off the grates, then leave the lid open for about five minutes so the grill can cool a bit more.

Once the grill has cooled for a few minutes, grab the pans of seared rib meat, place them on the cooking surface of the grill, close the lid and walk away. Using the “dinner’s at 6, so start at 2” timing, you really shouldn’t have to open the grill again until 5. Of course, if you hear an extreme amount of sizzling or there are flames shooting from around the edges of the lid or through the vent holes, yes, please open it up and deal with it. And sure, if it’ll make you feel better, open it about halfway through the cooking process (say, at 4) and turn the ribs over in the pan. But if the grill isn’t acting up at all, you should be able to just leave it alone and let the little beasties roast till their heart’s content.

An hour before you want to serve these ribs (say, 5 p.m. for a 6:00 dinner), pour some of the BBQ sauce into a glass bowl. Open up the grill and brush sauce onto the top and sides of each of the ribs. Close the grill again and let the ribs cook. After 30 minutes (yup, that’s 5:30), open the grill and use the tongs to turn the ribs over. Again, brush sauce onto the top and sides of each of the ribs. Close the grill once more and let the ribs cook until it’s time to serve them.

Cooking them slowly this way, they should almost fall apart, while if you’ve used racks of ribs, they probably will.

We had these babies last night with a little cole slaw and a chilled pasta salad. They’d also go good with baked potato (you could bake foil-wrapped potatoes on the grill with the ribs while they’re cooking at the lower temperature), or even with sauerkraut and a stout German ale.

Oh … don’t forget the napkins!

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